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All browsers on OS X suck?

kockgunner

kockgunner

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Sep 24, 2007
1,565
22
Vancouver, Canada
Ok, I'm becoming increasingly pissed off about this: every single damn browser is broken on OS X. Why can't it be like Windows for once?

Chrome: Youtube is either transparent and you can see the application window behind the browser where the video is supposed to be.. OR the video flashes black every 3 seconds. Adblock sucks. High CPU usage when many tabs open.

Firefox 3 & 4: Whole thing feels clunky. Scrolling constantly jerky and hangs. Beachballs. Slows computer a lot when multiple tabs open.

Safari: Flash plugin crashes. Beach balls. High disk activity. Poor battery life when using it. Opening multiple tabs slows down computer. Did I mention beachballs?

Opera: Just downloaded recently and seems good except I can't interact with Youtube videos! The video scrubber doesn't pop up when I hover my mouse, I can rarely click to play/pause, can't close the semi-transparent Google ads.

WTF is wrong with all the browsers on OS X. ******* man. Many problems seem flash related. I've have Flash 10.2 (FWIW) and turned off hardware acceleration like people are suggesting, but it doesn't help with anything. You can't argue Flash is prevalent on the web if not only for Youtube.

Even aside from Flash related problems, it seems every browser on OS X just isn't as stable as on a PC. Maybe it's just that I haven't spent too much time on a PC doing extensive browsing, but even when I was a PC user, I never remembered having so many problems!

Which browser does everyone use and does anyone have the same infuriating problems as me?!
 
Which version of OSX are you running?

Have you tried emptying the browser cache?

Have you tried repairing the permissions as flash player causes some unwanted problems.

Any other info on any thing else that is happening eg: non loading pages

Also which extensions if any are you using with safari and firefox?
 
Can't say I have any of your problems – not with Chrome, Safari or Firefox.

Flash itself is poorly written for OS X, unfortunately. It would be nice if Adobe would fix that, n'est-ce pas?
 
Agreeing with everyone else. You clearly have another issue that's causing this to happen.

I have an original Mac Pro (The first version after they killed the Power Mac) which at this point is about 4 years old. It runs Basically every web browser just fine on Snow Leopard. I rarely ever have issues with any of them. I use Safari just out of preference but I could use any of them.

Do as others have suggested, maybe even do a clean install of OS X, you may have gunked something up and it's causing problems. It's always nice to reinstall and start from a clean slate once in awhile too.
 
Don't have any of your problems either. Except that youtube has some glitches in my safari. Opening with Firefox resolves the issue.

There is something else wrong with your hard-/software.
 
QuarterSwede said:
It's not the browsers OP it's a known YouTube/Flash issue. Just go to the channels site to watch videos until it's rectified. I think Flash 10.2 screwed something up.
Click to expand...

Flash screwed something up? No way... But, everyone wants Flash on their iPhone.... I wonder why Apple won't put it on the iPhone then... hrm...
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3 like Mac OS X; de-de) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8F190 Safari/6533.18.5)

The same here. Safari, Chrome and Firefox work without any issues. Battery life on my MBA is great.
 
This is pretty much sums up my experience of ALL browsers on OS X:

Safari: The only 64-bit browser and resource-intensive, but definitely feels the fastest. However, Safari has major compatibility issues with embedded wmv and mkv videos. Multiple tabs slow the browser to a crawl (with 8GB, it's unlikely the lack of RAM)

Chrome: VERY fast browsing, and it's a dream if you're an addict to all Google web apps (gmail, picasa etc). However, it also has major compatibility issues, especially with many Asian language websites.

Firefox: By FAR the most compatible browser, with a myriad of add-ons to choose from. However, it is also SLOW and resource-intensive. The interface also seems very last-century (i.e. no integrated URL and search bar, no favorite/popular sites at launch etc.)

I find myself switching between browsers for different uses.
 
I hear you on Opera. For some reason, I can seldom click on vids and links on the Youtube page in Opera.
 
I use a Dell XP machine at work that has recently been crippled by graphics card issues, and it was recently replaced. I decided to give Chrome a spin on the PC side, as IE9 was only available for Vista and above and FF4 was not yet available. I've preferred the experience so far that I've made Chrome default on my home MB as well. Very clean, very fast.
 
caonimadebi said:
... However, Safari has major compatibility issues with embedded wmv and mkv videos. Multiple tabs slow the browser to a crawl (with 8GB, it's unlikely the lack of RAM)

...
Click to expand...
Install Perian and Flip4Mac, problem solved.

As for the sucky MacOS X browsers, I have more than a dozen on my PM G5 running fully-updated MacOS X 10.4. The only one that sucks of Internet Explorer 5.2.3 for obvious reasons. I use Safari for just about all of my needs. It scores a perfect 100 on the Acid3 Test. It works great on all tasks including Flash-based content.

P.S. I have YouTube setup for HTML5. However, the videos work fine using Flash.
 
The only times I had ever needed other web browser is when trying to access or do something in old websites created for the windows explorer only type of thing.
Reset Safari and many things will improve. Have all the latest updates.

About flash in the iPhone there is Skyfire web browser as a paid solution.

And if you want to have your Windows experience back it is up to you, there are plenty of choices:
- Boot Camp
- Virtual Box
- VM ware fusion
- Parallels
Stop whining and start acting.
 
kockgunner said:
Ok, I'm becoming increasingly pissed off about this: every single damn browser is broken on OS X. Why can't it be like Windows for once?

Chrome: Youtube is either transparent and you can see the application window behind the browser where the video is supposed to be.. OR the video flashes black every 3 seconds. Adblock sucks. High CPU usage when many tabs open.

Firefox 3 & 4: Whole thing feels clunky. Scrolling constantly jerky and hangs. Beachballs. Slows computer a lot when multiple tabs open.

Safari: Flash plugin crashes. Beach balls. High disk activity. Poor battery life when using it. Opening multiple tabs slows down computer. Did I mention beachballs?

Opera: Just downloaded recently and seems good except I can't interact with Youtube videos! The video scrubber doesn't pop up when I hover my mouse, I can rarely click to play/pause, can't close the semi-transparent Google ads.

WTF is wrong with all the browsers on OS X. ******* man. Many problems seem flash related. I've have Flash 10.2 (FWIW) and turned off hardware acceleration like people are suggesting, but it doesn't help with anything. You can't argue Flash is prevalent on the web if not only for Youtube.

Even aside from Flash related problems, it seems every browser on OS X just isn't as stable as on a PC. Maybe it's just that I haven't spent too much time on a PC doing extensive browsing, but even when I was a PC user, I never remembered having so many problems!

Which browser does everyone use and does anyone have the same infuriating problems as me?!
Click to expand...

Yet another person who thinks because they have a problem that means the entire world has a problem :rolleyes:
 
roadbloc said:
Solution.
Click to expand...

:D I'll be sure to give that a try!

chrono1081 said:
Yet another person who thinks because they have a problem that means the entire world has a problem :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

I never said everyone has the same problems, but it seems that at least a few other people have some of the problems I've mentioned. I'm asking if others have the same problems as me and even my title is in a question form open for discussion :)

I wish I didn't have to justify myself, but I'm an avid Mac user, but the only thing is that the browsers seem to have many random bugs at least on my setup. I guess I'll have to switch between browsers in the mean time. I prefer Chrome too if it wasn't for the Flash/Youtube problems

I'll stick with FF because besides the fact that it's clunky, everything works.
 
Maybe check out a browser called Camino? It uses the Firefox rendering engine, but strips out all the junk which keeps Firefox in 2003.
 
The only thing I agree with you listing is that Firefox is clunky. Never had any of the problems with Chrome or Safari that you listed either. Super weird.
 
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